ASK THE EXPERTS appears weekly from training camp through the Super Bowl with answers to a new question being posted Thursday morning. How the guest experts responded when we asked them: Who will be the fantasy MVP of the second half of the season?
SCOTT SACHS
As the Tampa Bay Buccaneers enter their bye week, it seems that they have one of the easier schedules in the 2nd half of the season. With Gronk and Antonio Brown hopefully returning to health in the next couple weeks, it is hard not to make a case for Tom Brady. He is having a great season and seems as motivated as ever. This was the time of year last season that the Bucs started their great run, and signs point to a potential for the same going forward.
Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, offering LIVE Talk & Text consulting. He has multiple league championships including 2 perfect seasons. Scott is a past winner of the Fantasy Index Experts Poll and a 2-time winner of the Experts Auction League.
DAVID DOREY
Have to love Najee Harris to be a star down the back half of the NFL season. He's being fed over 20 carries per game for the last three weeks, he's scored in each of the last four games, and he's catching anywhere from three to 14 passes per week. He's become the centralizing force of the offense and faces one of the lightest rushing schedules for the remaining games. The rest of the Steelers' offense may not be what it once was, but Harris is an every week fantasy gem that is getting better.
Dorey co-founded The Huddle.com in 1997. He's ranked every player and projected every game for the last 23 years and is the author of Fantasy Football: The Next Level. David has appeared on numerous radio, television, newspaper and magazines over the last two decades.
IAN ALLAN
If we were drafting again right now, I’d be thinking about Najee Harris. They use him heavily as both a runner and in the passing game, and that running game has been trending in the right direction. Durability is a big part of the game, and Harris to me looks like a much safer choice than McCaffrey to stay healthy for the remaining games.
Allan co-founded Fantasy Football Index in 1987. He and fellow journalism student Bruce Taylor launched the first newsstand fantasy football magazine as a class project at the University of Washington. For more than three decades, Allan has written and edited most of the content published in the magazines, newsletters and at www.fantasyindex.com. An exhaustive researcher, he may be the only person in the country who has watched at least some of every preseason football game played since the early 1990s. Allan is a member of the FSTA Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame.
SAM HENDRICKS
Dak Prescott. When he comes back he will be rested and ready to go. Dallas faces NFC East opponents in 4 of their last 5 games. He has Zeke and a handful of receivers and tight ends to throw to and the defense is starting to come together. Why not?
Hendricks is the author of Fantasy Football Guidebook, Fantasy Football Tips and Fantasy Football Basics, all available at ExtraPointPress.com, at all major bookstores, and at Amazon and BN.com. He is a 25-year fantasy football veteran who participates in the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) and finished 7th and 16th overall in the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC). He won the Fantasy Index Open in 2013 and 2018.
JUSTIN ELEFF
The 49ers have an amazing schedule for the fantasy playoffs -- vs. Atlanta, at Tennessee and vs. Houston in Weeks 15-17 -- but we're still a long way from knowing which of his own players Kyle Shanahan will hate by then. So skip the cheekier picks (Trey Lance, Eli Mitchell) and go with boring old Lamar Jackson instead. The schedule is good, the bye is behind him, the passing game (of all things) is dialed in (mostly), QB is our highest-scoring position across formats, and weather is no concern for a guy who runs like this. Career in the month of December: 13 games, 1,029 rushing yards, 8 rushing TDs.
Eleff hosts the Fantasy Index Podcast, available in the iTunes Store now. He has worked for Fantasy Index off and on all century.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Jordan Love. No just kidding. How about Jonathan Taylor? The Colts are gradually figuring out that more time with the ball in his hands rather than Carson Wentz's is the way to go to win games. He's been busy running it, and more involved as a receiver than initially expected. The remaining schedule is mostly friendly, with the Jets tonight and three games against the Jaguars and Texans. The tougher matchups (like the Bucs) should see Taylor catching plenty of passes. More realistically it will probably be a quarterback like Josh Allen, but give me Taylor as a weekly running back starter and I'll do pretty well, I think.
Richardson has been a contributing writer and editor to the Fantasy Football Index magazine and www.fantasyindex.com since 2002. His responsibilities include team defense and IDP projections and various site features, and he has run the magazine's annual experts draft and auction leagues since their inception. He previews all the NFL games on Saturdays and writes a wrap-up column on Mondays during the NFL season.